Configure voting agenda items

There are a multitude of voting settings available to configure voting agenda topics. To reduce complexity, there is an option to create Voting Templates. With these templates you can create a configuration once and then reuse it for all your other meetings. See "Voting template" on page 1 for more details.

General tab

The General tab contains some default fields as well as a number of configuration options.

Title and description: Here you can enter the name (and an optional description) of the voting item.

Print after voting stopped: Automatically prints the voting results when you select this check box.

Nr of voting options: In most cases 2, 3, 4 or 5 voting possibilities are possible. For multimedia units, it is possible to specify 1 up to 10 voting options. After selecting the number of voting options, you can configure each voting option.

Description: a description of the voting option

Color: For each of the voting options you can select a color. This is also the color that is used in the signage application to display the voting results.

Choice: here the physical voting buttons are shown that the delegates have to push on their voting unit to vote. Click the choice to change the buttons.

Abstain: for each of the voting options, you can select if this is an abstain vote. When you select abstain, the following options become available:

None: Abstain votes cannot be a valid choice for the outcome. If this option is selected, the abstain choice cannot be a valid voting choice for the outcome. As a consequence, in this situation the outcome will be “Majority not achieved”.

Abstain votes are subtracted from the vote totals for majority calculations.

Any of the other items. Select this option if you want add the abstain in the overall voting results.

Settings tab

In the Settings tab you can define who can vote and who can see the voting results. There are three settings you can set here:

Who can participate in the vote?
Who sees the overall results during the vote?
Who sees the individual voting results?

Vote participation versus delegate identification mechanism

Under Who can participate in the vote? you can select the delegates that can participate in the voting. Different options are available

Only delegates with a badge: only the delegates who have introduced their badge and who have voting right will be allowed to participate in the voting session.

Only delegates allocated on a seat: this means that only the delegates that have been placed on a seat (see Section 10.11) will be able to vote.

Delegates with a badge or allocated to a seat: combination of the above; one or the other.

All voting units: all voting units present in the room will be able to vote. This includes delegates without voting rights.

Important to note is that there are various ways in which delegates can identify themselves to the conferencing system – see "Meeting login method" on page 1 for more details. The interaction between the two settings is shown in the figure below.

Delegate identification method	Delegates are positioned on a seat they must introduce badges for Identification	Delegates are positioned on a seat. Inserted badges are ignored	Free seating Identification through inserted badge Positioning is allowed ==> badge should be inserted correctly
Who participates
Only delegates with a badge	-Correctly inserted badges can vote. - Wrong badge CANNOT vote.- No badge inserted CANNOT vote	Not available!	Only inserted badges can vote.
Only delegates positioned on a seat	Not available!	all seats: - CAN vote, IF a delegate is positioned on it - CANNOT vote, if no delegate is present	-inserted badges CANNOT vote in general can vote if correctly inserted on positioned seat - Positioned delegates can vote - empty seats cannot vote
Delegates with a badge OR positioned on a seat	Not available!	Not available!	- inserted badges CAN vote in general can NOT vote if incorrectly inserted on positioned a seat - Positioned delegates can vote - empty seats cannot vote
All voting units	All voting units	All voting units	All voting units

Note that normally the Delegate Identification mode has priority over the “Who can vote” setting. More details are described in the table.

Some of the options are not available with some of the Delegate Identification mechanisms. For the available options, the table clearly shows what happens with each of the situations where a badge is inserted correctly or incorrectly.

Who can see the voting results

Under Who sees the overall results during the vote? you can select who can see the overall voting results during the vote:

No one: no overall voting results will be shown during the vote. This means that there is no graphical representation of the results in the Signage and Operator Application.

Only Vote Master: Vote Master is a function in the Operator Application which the Operator (or chairman) can activate to control the vote. Select this option if the overall results should only be shown to the Vote Master. No graphical results will be shown in Signage and other Operator Application.

All Operators: all Operator Applications will show the overall voting results. The Signage Applications do not show the voting results.

Delegates: all Operator and Signage Applications show the overall voting results during the vote.

Under Who sees the individual voting results? you can select who can see the individual voting results during and after the vote, these are the personal voting choices of the delegates.

No one, never: choose this option if you want to have a real secret vote. After the voting, all traces of the individual votes are removed.

No one during the vote: choose this option if you do not want to show the individual results during the vote. After the vote is finished, the individual voting results will be visible to all.

Only Vote Master: Vote Master is a function in the Operator Application which the Operator (or chairman) can activate to control the vote. Select this option if the overall results should only be shown to the Vote Master. No graphical results will be shown in Signage and other Operator Application.

All Operators: all Operator Applications show the individual voting results. The Signage Applications do not show the individual voting results.

Delegates: all Operator and Signage Applications show the individual voting results during the vote.

Other settings

Voting correction: If voting correction is activated, the delegates have the possibility to correct their vote during the entire voting session. If deactivated, the voting keys are blocked after the delegate casts his vote. No changes possible.

Vote indication: here you can specify (in some of the options mentioned above) if there should be an indication if a delegate has voted (as opposed to what he voted):

Operator voting indication: select this option if the Operator Applications should show an indication (gray border) that a delegate has voted.

Signage voting indication: select this option if the Signage Applications should show an indication (gray border) that a delegate has voted.

Vote panel: select here what the vote panel should show after the delegate has cast his vote.

No vote indication: There is no indication that the delegate has voted. This means the voting LEDs keep flashing and there is no visual feedback to the delegate that his vote was registered. This means his neighbor also doesn't have an indication if the delegate has voted.

Vote indication: There is an indication that the delegate has voted. All the voting LEDs light up (instead of flashing). The real vote choice is not shown.

Real vote choice: The voting LED with the real vote choice is highlighted. The delegate can see what he has voted (but his neighbor too).

Unanimous voting: select this option if you want to apply a unanimous voting to the voting item. When you activate this option the operator needs to select the voting option in the Operator application once he activates the voting item. ( in the case of unanimous voting, all discussion units that are entitled to vote, will not activate the voting buttons)

Timer tab

See "General agenda item functionality" on page 1 for a detailed description of the timer functionality.

Voting Timer tab

Here you can enable the voting timer if you want to limit the voting session in time. This timer is started automatically when the voting is started. If you do not check the box Timer can exceed, the voting session automatically stops once the timer finishes.

Quorum tab

The quorum is defined as the percentage of delegates that have to be present in order for the voting to start. The following options are available:

Enable Quorum: check this box to enable the quorum. Checking this box results in a check before the voting session can start. This is to verify that the quorum is reached. If it is not selected, you can always start the voting session.
The quorum can be defined:

Absolute: a number of delegates that has to be present.

Relative: a fraction of the totally expected delegates to be present.

Presence determined by: here you can select which method to use to determine the presence. The following options are available; the first four options apply before the voting can start; the last one applies after the vote:

Introduced badges: the number of delegates that have introduced their badge will be used to count & determine if the quorum is reached.
Presence detection phase before vote: before the real vote is started, the delegates will have the opportunity to press the middle vote button to confirm their presence.
Delegates allocated on a seat: the number of delegates that are allocated on a seat will be used to count & determine if the quorum is reached.
Entered manually by operator.
Total number of votes: the value that is compared to the quorum is the actual number of votes that have been cast. Note this is the only case in which the voting actually takes place before the quorum is determined

Enable Quorum Message: check this box if you want to show a message if the quorum is not reached. The default message is “Quorum not OK – voting postponed”.

Outcome tab

On this tab you can configure some settings that determine the outcome of the voting. This concerns the following settings::

Majority: here you can specify how much of the votes one single voting option should receive before it is valid/retained/passed. You can select the majority as

Absolute: in numbers of delegates

Relative: in a certain percentage of either the number of delegates with voting right OR the number of votes cast. This is specified by the next choice:

Majority option: here you define the reference group

Number of delegates entitled to vote is used for majority calculations.

Number of votes cast is used for majority calculations.

Enable Outcome message: if this box is checked, you can define an optional message that will be shown (in Operator and Signage Application) when:

Pass: one of the votes has achieved the majority as defined above.

Hung: two or more votes have received an equal amount of votes, this is defined as a “Hung vote”.

Fail: no single vote option has reached the majority.

Hung vote tab

A hung vote is defined as a non-conclusive vote. This means that more than one vote option has the required number of votes to reach the majority. In this tab, you can define what should happen if this situation occurs.

If you don’t specify what to do, then the vote is saved to the database without a successful outcome. The options to solve a hung vote are:

Keep the voting session active until the Operator manually stops it.

Restart the voting session with all voting options available.

Determined by the chairmen votes in this voting session. There is no new voting round; the votes that were cast by the units designated as chairmen are used to calculate the winning vote.

Determined by the chairmen votes in a new chairmen-only voting session. Start a new voting round for the chairman units designated only. The voting result will be determined by this new voting round. In this case the results of the original (hung) voting round are not saved to the database, and also not available for printing.

Stop voting and the operator decides. A message box will appear where the operator can choose from the two (or more) options that caused the hung vote.
Stop voting automatically: stops the vote automatically without the need of manual interaction.

Voting template

In CoCon you can save the voting settings to a voting template. The database contains a collection of these items, which are available when creating new voting agenda items. On installation, a number of default voting templates are already available in the database.

You can view the voting template by clicking Modify Template in the ribbon on top of the window or you can click the expander on the bottom of the page. This opens the voting template where you can change the voting settings of this template. On the General tab you can select the template. The other functionalities on this tab and the remaining tabs, is the same as described above.

Click New, to create a completely new and empty template. Click Edit to make changes to the selected template and click Delete to remove the selected template. Click Clear All to remove all voting templates.

It is not possible to edit the default voting templates.

Figure 1-20 Voting templates in CoCon Meeting Manager. Click the expander on the bottom of the application to view the voting templates.

Save Voting Template

When you open a voting agenda topic, you can save the voting template settings in the upper right corner of the topic. If you click Save Voting Template, CoCon saves the current settings of this voting agenda item to a voting template. The name of this template is the title of the voting agenda item, followed by “_Template”.

Under Current Template, you can choose which voting template to use. Click the arrow next to the drop-down box to show all the voting templates, and select one to apply it to your item.